Lots of things were raw yesterday, during Oprah's sit-down with Whitney Houston's mother, Cissy. Things like Cissy's Houston's disapproval of Bobby Brown. Things like Oprah Winfrey's raw-ass raggedy old face.

Everyone in California has lost their damn minds in advance of the state's foie gras ban that goes into effect this Sunday, July 1st.

Colorado is fully on fire. A number of devastating blazes are currently raging across the state in various stages of non-containment. Governor John Hickenlooper is already calling this "the worst fire season in the history of Colorado."

Remember a month ago when New York City—specifically: actor Jude Law—was rocked by a sudden bee attack as inexplicable as it was horrific?

The residents of a small Wisconsin town have had their lives plagued by house-rattling underground booms for the past few nights. No one has yet been able to identify the source of the sounds.

Atlantic City: the biggest shithole on the East Coast, where blocks of open-air crack markets immediately give way to cut-rate seedy casinos full of doomed and hopeless poverty-level day trippers in a geographic continuum of vice and despair unequaled anywhere in its chemical spill-laden state of New Jersey. Now it's easier to have your wedding there. Alert your spouse-to-be.

Glorious American capitalism has advanced so much in the past year that the traditional "Black Friday" day of shopping hell has now become "Black Midnight," in which major big box retailers open their doors on the first, dark minute of the day after Thanksgiving, so that your time in pre-Christmas retail torment may be prolonged as much as possible. Target's doing it. Best Buy's doing it. But... but what about Wal-Mart?

Here we are, two months into the Christmas shopping season. Have you finished? No, because you didn't start in September like you were supposed to. Well, not to worry; corporate America is doing everything in its power to make you feel guilty about your laziness and poverty of ideas as well as money for several more hours, this holiday season.

USA Today is what used to be called a "newspaper" back in the days before the internet, but after the majority of adult Americans became functionally illiterate. In this confusing "new media" age, USA Today has pursued a strategy of becoming the news outlet of choice for angel-believers. Hey, it's a demographic!

So which secret fairy-tale chamber in the skies or, alternately, below the earth's crust, is Osama bin Laden kickin' it in these days?

They're not going to be a couple or anything, but they will both be in New Year's Eve. Also today: some exciting news items for the nerdy among us and AMC orders a new show, as does Nickelodeon.

Did you know airplanes have automated messages that notify passengers when they are falling into the sea? A British Airways flight recently told passengers, "We're about to crash," prompting widespread panic. Then the flight attendants were like, "Psyche!"

Southern Russia is basically on fire. Yesterday alone, hundreds of fires broke out due to record heat and dry fields, and at least 28 people have died. But that didn't stop a few guys from driving through Hell on Earth.

Now that home sales are plunging again and prices are set to plummet, it's time to take advantage of the opportunity to buy yourself a brand new home somewhere terrible. Which of these hellacious real estate nightmares do you prefer?

You may have thought that news stories about the Pope and pedophilia were based on his shady doings when he found out that children were being abused. Get thee away devil! It was Satan's work. The pope remains blameless.

Are you one of those "young people whose true religion is music?" Marketing consultants have determined the proper place for you to live: in a gleaming, Miami Beach-style condo on West 30th street. Where music lives!

Botox: "the only profit-making venture for terrorists that can also potentially yield a weapon of mass destruction." Any Islamofascist biology major can pose as a Botox salesman while manufacturing enough botulinum toxin to kill thousands. Save us, Nicole Kidman! [WP]

Good god. Remember that little outbreak of a mysterious intestinal illness at the New York Times that shut down the company cafeteria earlier this month? Well, they've run some tests, and...we don't know how to tell you this...it's... Norovirus. (*Checks Wikipedia.*) Dang that makes you throw up and poop!

We're not sure how to break this to you. So we'll just say it: People in China go to Ikea just to hang out. And sleep on the beds.

The wonders of electrical technology have created an iPhone app for the Weekly World News. Below, a look back at more than a decade of the fattest, skinniest, Satan-est, most eerie predictions and reports of America's greatest paper. Nostradamus, hello!